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		Education: A Choice to Succeed By Martin Callanan MEP The Labour Party is fond of bemoaning Britain's (as they see it) rigid class structure yet fails to provide children with access to social mobility through education. How different would the UK's education agenda be if the political rhetoric embedded in education policy and the school voucher debate was replaced by politicians walking door to door informing parents that their child would never have any hope of escaping a failing school? By opposing vouchers, politicians are telling the most underprivileged British citizens that, "You are too poor to afford more, too poor to have control over your child's future, and too poor to have a choice." Those opposed to vouchers, which empower parents to gain control over their most precious possession, are turning a blind eye to the true problems that have overwhelmed the education system and are sealing children into a fate of poverty and oppression. School choice through vouchers offers a powerful opportunity to use conservative principles to roll back the tide of big government by empowering the individual. School choice will provide even the poorest of Britain's children the choice to succeed. More than a Quick Fix Hundreds of thousands of British children are stuck in failing schools, mostly in Labour controlled inner city areas, and are not learning essential skills like reading and mathematics. Instead, policymakers have looked to increased funding as a quick-fix solution to a crumbling education system. By the 2007-2008 school-year, per pupil spending will double from what was spent 10 years ago -- totalling 5.6 percent of GDP. Despite this substantial increase in school funding, 23% of 11 year-old students fail to meet the nationally prescribed standard in English, 26% are falling below maths and science standards and 25% have insufficient reading and writing skills. While these numbers may seem adequate to some, they do not tell the whole truth. These statistics do not fairly represent the quality of education in urban, inner-city schools. Minority, inner-city students disproportionately bare the burden of poor education. These are trapped children, with parents too poor to buy into better suburban school areas or to cover the costs of private tuition. The middle classes, of course, have long exercised school choice by the simple device of buying a house in an area served by a better school. Policy & Practice School vouchers, first suggested by the economist Milton Friedman in his 1955 essay, The Role of Government in Education, offers the opportunity for parents to choose which school their child attends -- giving that child the opportunity to leave an underperforming school for one where they will have the chance to obtain a quality education. Friedman's idea was to disrupt the current virtual monopoly of the public school system by opening it to free market pressures that will effectively force the radical changes necessary to improve pupil achievement--changes that years of increased funding have not, and could not have, produced. Vouchers essentially give parents an allotted sum of money, equal to or less than the average portion spent on public education per pupil, to assist with the costs of private education on a transfer to an alternate state or faith based school. A variety of strategies can be used to decide who gets these vouchers. It can be done by school catchment area, by city, by region, or even by nation. Other strategies include awarding vouchers only to students in poor performing schools, typically located in poor inner city neighbourhoods. Regardless of the implementation strategy taken, vouchers ensure that money follows the student to a school where that child can receive a decent education. Getting down to the basic structure of vouchers removes the issue from a politically charged platform to one of opportunity. Vouchers directly benefit kids stuck in bad schools. The families most likely to reap the benefits of school vouchers are lower income families that currently cannot afford private schooling. These are the people who most want the program of school choice -- not the financially stable middle class. Rather than turning a blind eye to those children who are receiving less, solely because they cannot afford more, policy leaders should look to the success of vouchers in Sweden, the Netherlands and the United States. Sweden has provided universal school choice since 1992. In the Netherlands, school choice is a constitutional right. Meanwhile, the United States has created a number of school choice schemes, most notably in the cities of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Cleveland, Ohio as well as in the state of Florida. In each of these countries, thousands more children are receiving a quality education, chosen by their parents, than would otherwise be the case. Recent studies have shown that these voucher schemes not only provide tuition assistance for students to go to private schools, but also improve state schools. In Florida, a sweeping testing and voucher program has produce substantial statistical support for the use of vouchers to improve state schools. According to the Manhattan Institute's 2003 study, "Florida's low-performing schools are improving in direct proportion to the challenge they face from voucher competition." Local authority schools already facing voucher competition showed the greatest improvement in maths and reading exam scores, while those faced with the prospect of vouchers showed the second greatest improvements in test scores. More simply, when the education system becomes more competitive through the use of vouchers, all children benefit, whether they go to a private or public institution. The Politics of School Choice Despite overwhelming parental support and statistical evidence of success, voucher schemes face continuous attacks from left wing political leaders and teachers' unions. However, while traditionally aligned with liberal-minded Democrats who have opposed vouchers, black grass root movements in the United States have reframed the voucher debate into one of educational equality. By comparing failing inner-city schools to segregation reminiscent of Southern suppression, the US black minority turned the debate from free-markets to the "civil-rights movement of the 1990s." In 1999, 60% of blacks in the United States favoured vouchers, 72 percent among those earning less than $15,000 a year. Other studies show support as high as 95% among blacks in urban cities. Support for school choice was so strong in Cleveland, Ohio, that nearly 6,300 students, almost all of whom were black, applied for only 2,000 vouchers. Over 200 low-income minority parents and children attended a three-hour-long Wisconsin state assembly hearing where school choice was being considered. Four years later, 750 mostly low-income blacks rallied for its expansion. It is the black inner-city parents who have pushed school vouchers into a political reality in America. Repackaged as "school choice," vouchers gave American conservative leaders a new constituency; the black inner-city minority. While this population will never be folded into the Republican base, it does offer an opportunity to expand conservative principles such as individual responsibility and empowerment while also regaining influence and favour over the traditionally left-wing dominated political education agenda. Vouchers are more than a debate about free-markets; they are an argument about individual empowerment and equal rights. On this basis, they allow conservative politicians to reach out to minority populations, showing them that Conservatives trust them and respect their right to have a say in their child's education. Just as council house sales enabled Margaret Thatcher to convert thousands of inner city tenants into property owners, school choice offers today's Conservative Party the opportunity to regain support in poor inner city areas suffering under decades of badly managed municipal socialism. Conclusion School choice offers the opportunity to reach out and support the most vulnerable: Britain's children. It takes control over educational programs away from socialist councils and teachers' unions, and puts it into the hands of parents. Who better than a parent to decide what is best for their child? To say otherwise is reminiscent of the arrogance and social class rigidity often blamed on conservatives, but actually enforced by the left. Conservatives should be knocking on parents' doors and telling them, "You deserve more, you should have control over your child's future, and you should have a choice." "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." Victor Hugo Martin Callanan MEP Martin was first elected MEP for the North East region in 1999. He is a member of the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy Committee, and a substitute member of the Employment & Social Affairs Committee. He chairs the Political Affairs Committee of the ACP-EU Joint Assembly and is a substitute member on the Central Asia and Mongolia Delegation as well as the Ukraine Delegation. In addition, Martin serves on the Media Support Center Foundation Committee Board (Kyrgyzstan) along with US Senator John McCain.